Full Steam Ahead in the West Bank

Abstract

On the eve of one of U.S. Secretary of State James Baker's many recent visits to Israel, Mapam and Ratz-two left-of-center Israeli parties with fewer than ten members of Knesset between them-organized a march and demonstration in the center of West Jerusalem to protest the policies of the Likud government. The crowd was young, orderly, and enthusiastically cheery in a way that suggested their tenuous identification with the somber intention of the procession. Many had been mobilized by the youth wings of the political movements, and those in attendance seemed to know one another. This intimacy-there were only 600 or so-made the protest somewhat of a family affair, restricted to a small minority of Israelis publicly willing to demand a change in the status quo. There is no organized opposition [to the government], notes Yeshyahu Leibowitz, the octogenarian father of Israel's most radical protest movement-Yesh Gvul (There is a Limit)-whose members have refused military service, first in Lebanon and now in the occupied territories. There are groups and many individuals, but there is not an organized peace camp. The march down King George Street soon broke into scattered groups of demonstrators, who continued unimpeded except for the occasional heckler (Shamir is right! You are traitors!) to a square in the formerly Arab neigh-